There were 11 of us who gathered last spring in Port Clyde to be ferried by lobsterboat out to McGee Island, 3 miles off Maine’s Midcoast, for the 10th annual Salty Quill Writers’ Retreat for Women. Waiting for us on the island were creative cook Patricia Riddle and her sous-chef, Deborah Marini, who would both play memorable roles in our weeklong stay, as would the workshop’s creator, Pam Loring.
McGee Island has been owned by the Erickson family for more than 100 years. Once there, visitors can get their bearings by scouting out the family estate’s library for historical data. The information set out for perusal includes a document discussing the original plans for the building of the great house, which served during our stay as habitation for our entire group. (McGee as a VRBO and Salty Quill as a retreat offering both can be accessed online.)
Once on island, we unpacked our gear, which for this visit included our many laptops. That first evening, we all gathered to acquaint or re-acquaint ourselves with each other. Many, if not most of us, had been participants at former Salty Quill retreats, captivated enough by this unique opportunity to return again and again to this location and pastime. The combination of privacy, island magic with relics of the past, and the three sumptuous meals provided daily in the separate cookhouse, have had a distinctly magnetic effect on our souls.
The personal freedom this retreat offers is an appealing aspect. There are no programs. We brought our own on-going work or ideas for our next projects and applied personal disciplines and habits accordingly.
For outdoor diversion, refreshment of the mind, and self-care, there is a small wood-fired sauna house and a large lawn for yoga practice. Inside, a massive rock-studded fireplace in the great house provides a source of heat on cold, windy, or rainy days, or after a brisk dip in the ocean. And of course, besides several bathrooms, there is an outdoor shower (classic Maine)!
Many trails follow the rocky shoreline or cut across the brush of the island’s interior. Treasure-seeking along the mineral-studded stone beaches and inland foot paths led to troves of sea-glass, old ceramic shards, and bleached bones.
Every meal was a feast. After each dinner, we retired to the living room and listened to original work read aloud by two retreat members each evening. Feedback was optional, depending on the wishes of each performing participant. So many insights and encouragements were available from this experienced and dedicated group of women, that more often than not, we felt safe with responses after our readings.
Upon arriving on island, each participant chose a rock and marked it with her name. When we showed up for our meal, we moved our rocks from one bowl to another next to it. That way the cooks could know if each woman had been fed. And we became pretty attached to those rocks.
One night’s dinner consisted of a delicious chicken curry, jasmine rice, roasted carrots, and for dessert, individual lemon possets. The next afternoon we enjoyed Asian fare, including scallion pancakes and poke bowls. Our thrilled palates and sated appetites inspired our writing!
Evenings, the after-dinner atmosphere of the fire crackling in the background, the scent of woodsmoke saturating the old floor-to-ceiling book-lined wooden shelves, and the original manuscript works read aloud after our cooks had joined us in the main house completed McGee’s perfection.
A special component of the retreat is that technology did not rule our lives on the island. Yes, we tapped our words into laptops for preservation but we often perched outdoors somewhere—sometimes simply with lined paper and pen or pencil—capturing passages. No one rabidly took pictures of every little happening. It was a significantly felt time away from the most exhausting and frustrating elements on the mainland, those we are all-too-familiar with, ever-present as they are in our daily lives.
We were not pampered. Return visitors had learned what to bring to stay comfortable in an un-heated house in coastal Maine; in both spring or fall (the retreat seasons), any weather can descend and linger. All of us were introduced to this experience by Loring, who envisioned and started the Salty Quill retreat 10 years ago. We celebrated the fullness of the decade during our week together. As always, we found her gift bags waiting for us when we arrived, one on each bed.
Small groups of women tend to tune in to each other. Island life, for a week at a time, suits us, the Salty Quills. Creative writing feeds our spirits. At the close of the week, we returned to our quotidian routines, somewhat reluctantly, having made substantial progress with our written projects, stronger in ourselves from having forged bonds with fellow women, and with an anticipation of seasoning our quills for a future shared retreat on McGee.
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Erine Leigh grew up in a family of writers. She served as poet laureate in Portsmouth, New Hamphire, from 2015 to 2017, conducting a writing project with school children, called Poems For Peace. She continues this work in Eastport, Maine.
